"he had started going out on dates."
Police said that Aftab Ameen Poonawala started dating again just days after dumping the last of his girlfriend’s remains.
Poonawala was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar, nearly six months after the incident happened.
On May 18, 2022, he strangled her to death at their flat in Delhi. Afterwards, he chopped her body into 35 pieces and stored her remains in a fridge.
He then gradually dumped her remains in Mehrauli forest.
Police have now revealed that a few days after dumping the last of Shraddha’s remains, he started dating again and brought at least one woman back to his flat.
Poonawala told police that sometime in late August, he started dating women he met on Bumble.
He also claimed that it is the same app where he met Shraddha. However, the victim’s father said his daughter actually met Poonawala at a Mumbai call centre.
Police are now set to contact Bumble to obtain details of all the women who Poonawala interacted with on the app.
One officer said: “He confessed in his questioning that sometime in August-September, he had started going out on dates.
“He had met a woman who even came to the flat where he murdered Shraddha.
“We will contact the woman after getting her details from Poonawala’s call data records.
“We may write to Bumble to see if he befriended other people too… They could be of vital help for us.”
The details of Poonawala’s profile and activities on Bumble and his call detail records could also help police ascertain if Shraddha was killed as a result of his relationship with another woman.
In his confession, Poonawala’s said he killed Shraddha because she constantly pestered him to marry.
One officer who questioned Poonawala said:
“Poonawala has told us that in early 2022, the couple had problems in their relationship.”
“They decided to leave Maharashtra and shift to Delhi, where they could both find jobs.
“Poonawala said they wanted to save their relationship and thus visited Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand before coming to Delhi in the second week of May.”
However, officers are suspicious of the claims that he and Shraddha were having relationship issues, citing an Instagram post by the victim on February 14.
The couple were still living in Maharashtra and it was a photo of them together which was captioned:
“Happy days.”
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